Find your true self
Use your strengths and weaknesses
Care about others
Keep your own self true
Just be alert
Only trust in you
Each day is a new beginning
Bring something to the table
Identify toxic influences
Destroy nothing unique
End things in a timely fashion
Never not learn from failing
Here is a thought I had today. Most of the fairy tales we know and love involve princesses and queens. A certain company that I will not name makes big money off of the movies and merchandise associated with these stories. Think about this: the princesses are all kind, and good natured and faultlessly good. The queens are warped and mean and totally evil. Wait a second …. don’t princesses become queens? Do these wonderful princesses evolve into the epitome of evil when they ascend the throne? The plots of these stories revolve around the evil queen trying to destroy the good princess. What if the queen had received an instinctual or intuitional premonition that the princess will become evil when she becomes a queen and the “evil” queen is trying to save the world from a princess that turns evil? Wouldn’t that make the queen “good” for trying to eliminate “evil”? Food for thought, people.
It is widely believed that the Governments of this world are spraying their populations with chemicals and germs from high flying planes. If you do a search on the web you will find a plethora of pages about this subject. Some of them offer proof of this and some debunk it. It is a mixed bag. Here is an example of a webpage: https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2020/02/the-united-nations-exposes-chemtrails-100-proof-we-are-being-poisoned/
I have a simple proposal. Since the infrastructure is in place to perform this, why don’t we all contact our congress critters and insist that they use this to spray us all with the COVID vaccine. This would eliminate the need for egregious mandates and “vaccine passports”. If they are already spraying us with malicious chemicals, why not, by popular demand” spray something beneficial? You can find contact information for your politicians online. Let’s get this rolling!!
This entry I am going to talk a bit about cemeteries. Cemeteries are our legacy. They chronicle the passage of time and can give a feeling of loneliness and/or insignificance. They could also give a feeling of peace and tranquility. Back around 100 years ago or more, people viewed cemeteries as parks. holding picnics or taking leisurely Sunday strolls down tended paths. They did not fear the dead, they respected the grounds and treated it with an awe filled reverence. Lovers would sit under the trees or lean on the stones dreaming of things to come. Poets would be inspired by the atmosphere of serenity.
There is a true equality in death and it doesn’t matter the size of your stone. Below you will find some pictures I took today in one of the cemeteries in Carlisle PA
Next time you pass a cemetery give it a look. You never know what you might find … even if the only thing to find is peace of mind. 🙂
A wise person once said: “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana”. Does time really exist or is it just a subjective way for us to delineate our lives? My cats are not concerned with the passage of time. They eat, sleep, and play on no set schedule. When I make beer I am aware of times such as boiling for at least 60 minutes, fermenting for about 2 or 3 weeks, a week or 2 to carbonate, but is that anything near reality? To the yeast, fermentation is done when it is done. The beer will only carbonate as fast as conditions such as ambient temperature allow. There is no hurry, no sense of necessity. With ham radio, I keep track of time as a reference. I note down what time my contact started and what time it finished. I do no worry about how long it takes to establish a contact. I just call until someone answers. Maybe that is why I am not into contests … too much pressure of time involved, trying to make as many contacts as possible during a limited timeframe.
Oh well, enough for now. I am going to go back to frittering my life away harmlessly. Namaste, y’all.
I like goldfish (Carassius auratus). Some in the aquarium hobby would see them as common or plebian, but I like them. Don’t get me wrong, I like all kinds of tropical fish such as plecos and corys and neons, but I have always had a soft spot for goldfish. I actually prefer the simplicity of the common types. I rescue feeders from pet stores and give them a chance. Right now my biggest is about 4 inches. He started out black but has since turned gold.
I do like the fancy ones, the orandas, moors, reiku, etc, but i prefer the simple little comets and feeders.
Here is a picture of one of my tanks. The picture quality could be better but it was taken with my fone and fish tend to move around.
There is a simple pleasure I derive from watching them swim around. It is relaxing and has an almost therapeutic virtue to it. More nonsense to come later.
The book I am reviewing today is “Today I Am A Ham” by Ethelyn M Parkinson. My wife found it at a yardsale. For a youth-oriented book, I found it interesting and enjoyable. 14 year old Eric aspires to be a ham while maneuvering through typical family and school and friend issues. He isn’t the athlete that his coach father wants him to be; he also is’t the perfect brother that his drama queen sister wants him to be. He gets the full support of his other sister and, with the help of friends and local adults, he is able to get his ham ticket. As for sports, I will leave that to you. On the whole, it was a good read. Below is a link to some reader reviews:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1697633.Today_I_Am_a_Ham
There is a long association between weather and radio in general and Amateur Radio in particular. When broadcast radio started to become in general use, people began to rely on it for local weather reports. Amateur Radio was also found to be useful for spreading weather reports, not only locally but over long distances. One topic of conversation over the radio has always been the weather. Many QSOs include the local weather. It does go deeper than just chatting, however. Hams are concerned about the weather. If thunderstorms come along, it is bad to have your equipment hooked up in case of a lightening strike. Hail and high winds can take down antennas. Trees can come down during storms and flooding can cause all kinds of havoc.
Amateur Radio operators (hams) have been and still are relied upon to provide back-up communications in emergencies and a lot of emergencies are weather related. Even if a ham cannot get to an area and assist with communications they can still be of value by reporting local conditions. A lot of hams have weather stations in their yard and can report things such as temperatures, pressure changes and precipitation totals to the NWS. There are phone apps that allow you to report (mPing is one example and is free) local conditions. What do you do if your cell service is out? Well there are a lot of clubs out there that hold nets when there is severe weather. You can log into a net on a repeater and report. They usually have a back-up plan in the event that repeaters are down. There are also weather nets on the HF bands where you can report conditions. A lot of options exist.
At the extreme end, there are hams who go out spotting bad storms such as tornados. anyway, here is a list of some resources to use if you want to get into weather reporting or learn more about the weather:
http://www.weather.gov is the National Weather Service website
https://www.weather.gov/SKYWARN This is the official NWS Skywarn page
https://www.weather.gov/skywarn/wfo_links This is a link to find local spotter classes in your area
https://www.meted.ucar.edu/education_training/course/23 This is a link to online spotter training
https://www.skywarn.org/local-groups/ And finally a link to locate groups in your area.
I hope this has been useful information to someone out there. 🙂
Between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday pre-noon we got 89 mm of rain. Creeks were upand some roadways were flooded. We made it over to Shippensburg and then Newville with no problems. There were some spots that trees had fallen but they had been cleared when we came through. Now things have calmed down.
We were without the internet from about 0730 yesterday until sometime this morning. It is amazing how much that affects your life. We had no tv as the Roku rely’s on the internet and our satellite has been disconnected as we don’t really need it. Our internet/phone carrier is Centurylink which is very sub-par when it comes to service and reliability . Some state representatives have directed the PUC to investigate Centurylink for the duration of outages lately and their seeming lack of enthusiasm to fix things. We will see what happens.
A nice day here in Pencilvania. We were out and about doing some shopping earlier and then when we got home, we burned some trash and I got Satan’s Putting Green under control. I was even nice enough to sweep the grass cuttings off of the road. 🙂 I refer to my lawn as Satan’s Putting Green as it isn’t really lawn. It is more pasture that over grows easily with the wrong kind of grass and other plants. I do have a lot of purslane and millefoil, so it isn’t all that bad. I also have ground ivy which can be used for bittering beer.
Now I am drinking coffee, relaxing and trying to make contacts on my radio. Hmmm … no wonder I am not even getting spotted. I just checked the MUF prediction for this area and I am well above the Maximum Useable Frequency for the bands today. I have been calling on 24.910 MHz and getting no response. Time to tune to a different band. Ok. Now I am on 10.118 MHz. 30 Meters is a good all around band. I will try here. My signal should get out. That is one nice thing about being an Amateur Extra and using CW … you can use any Amateur Radio band. I have even, on occasion, invaded the SSB (voice) portions of bands like 80M and 160M. I am not obnoxious about it. I do listen first for a clear frequency. I just got spotted by a station from Portugal. My signal is travelling. I think one reason that I am not getting anyone is that there are some contests going on. Since 30M is not a contest band, there might be few people here. Oh well, it is all part of the fun. The antenna I am using is my homemade dipole. Dipoles are easy to make and work very well. They can also bee difficult for people to see which is a good thing. There. I worked a station down in Florida. Well closing this for now. Almost time to go on recon.
Nature, Radio, and Me 